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Just Be Friends Behind the Scenes Part 2

Ok, I've been seating on this long enough and the Chinese New Year mood is subsiding so time to write!

I'm sorry this might be somewhat a duplicate of reiko's entry. But I'll try my best to write about things she didn't mention.

Okay so, maybe a little about how the project started. Before this, I wasn't exactly a vocaloid fan. The songs I heard previously didn't quite impress me very much. One fine day, reiko was going about her usual 'vocaloid pimping' thing on msn (think she was trying to convince me to do kagamine rin with her xD).

And JBF was one of the songs she showed me, boy was I blown away. One of the things that can touch me the most is music. After watching the pv with the english translation I just felt I wanted to do something! So much love and effort was put into the storyboarding of the pv. And the simplistic art style conveyed such a beautiful sense of void that ties in seamlessly with the song.

It was just so touching!

I've always loved music and I've always loved singing. So when I first fell in love with the pv I had wanted to sing the song! Yes, the project started because I wanted to do a simple cosplay slideshow with my cover of the song. But reiko thought since we're at it, might as well go all the way. And that's how it started.

What a simple beginning to a very complicated project o.o

So started the mad rush of gathering the props and costumes. Of course, we couldn't get everything accurate but we tried to be as close as we could. Much much loves to ying who lent reiko her gakuran and xrystal for lending me her sailormoon seifuku plus selling her pink wig to me. Much thanks to both these pretties!!!

I had to buy an additional short pink wig for the 'younger days' look and I hate that wig !!!! The bob cutting was so....bob! I only bought the wig the night before our shoot and tried to trim/save it as much as I could but.... It still sucked =.=

Reiko folding paper planes

Once we reached the studio we went into a mad rush of changing and makeuping. Totally frantic x.x. After that it was the balloon blowing and paper planes folding xD so much to be done!

To be honest, memories of the studio shoot itself is pretty fuzzy already. I only remember rushing, rushing and more rushing ahaha. It was a wild chase from one costume to another, making sure we utilized the studio as well as we can.

And it definitely wasn’t the best period to have a photoshoot *sigh* . My skin was (still veryyyyyy slowly) recovering from some unknown skincare product reaction during that period (wrong cleanser made things worse T_T) plus all the late nights preparing for the shoot turned it super dry and unhealthy *big sigh*. Even the heavy makeup couldn’t cover it *even bigger sigh*.

But that aside, I’m really thankful to have reiko and maria around to help during the shoot T.T Its impossible to arrange myself when I'm posing.

The studio shoot was very PV focused. We took a lot effort to make sure everything looked just like the pv. But that also meant there wasn't much room for creativity. So sadly, we didn’t managed to have as much ‘off shots’ as we’d like to have.

I think for each shot that was used in the PV, we prolly have 10 - 20 takes of the exact same thing.

And yes, we photo manipulated the pictures. I made sureI CGed EVERY SINGLE FREAKIN PHOTO TO ITS PRETTIEST!!!!!! So no…. I’m not half as good looking as the photos =_=;;; But I’m upfront about it so….don’t call me a liar okay haha! We just wanted to make sure the photos we presented will help piece the lovely story together and not have the viewers be too distracted by flaws. Call me a perfectionist, whatever!

We started shooting from maybe 2pm till 7pm (loosely based on my unreliable memory). Took a cab to town and have our late dinner there. We sat and rested at our dining area for quite some time before we finally went out to our last shoot location. By the time we ended, the malls have all closed. It’s that late X_X

And the 2nd day was another mad rush. If I had thought day 1 was tiring, day 2 was worse. Had to change into 7 different set of costumes just to take the flashbacks. Although I admit, we cut a lot of corners here and if something could not be seen by the camera, we won’t change it xD

Maria introducing the food to the camera xD . The other hand belongs to Peggy.

Reiko’s Dad bought us delicious stir fried lunch! NOMS!!!!

Another tiring factor was the physical walking, jumping, twirling and travelling around to get the shots needed. We took 3 of the flashback pictures at Reiko’s very hospitable home then went around the neighbourhood to shoot 3 more. After that, we took a cab down to the beach… Just for that damned Bicycle scene.

On the way to the Beach. Peggy and Reiko looks so cute here XD!!!Maria and Peggy ding some solo shots of reiko

We kinda took too long so by the time we did this picture, the sun was already gone beyond sight. Think it was probably 8pm when we finally took a cab back to reiko’s place.

The huge group of people on our right were having fun staring at us.

Random comments: I’m wearing the skirt from the seifuku, Reiko looks very manly here and peggy’s pose looked like some top model hahaa

We had dinner around the area. And after dinner, it was…..2 more shoots in 2 sets of clothes! *DIES* We did it at the dining area so as to get the ‘realistic daily life’ feeling that the original PV wanted to portray.

And after we went back to reiko’s place where they bundled me in a lovely pink yukata (OH YES! Yukata belongs to Decadence!) and it was finally the end! Much loves to Reiko for doing the Obi for me. She was really fast with it !

Reiko helping me to wear my red hearts earrings which you can’t see in 90% of the pics=_= FML

Maria’s magical hands doing wonders on my wig.

Her wig styling has been SUCH a great help to me. All the transformations would not have been successful if not for her help in styling my hair. And she did such a great job with them. *HUGS maria bb tighttttt*. I think this picture was taken by either peggy or reiko using maria’s cam.

Thank goodness Reiko’s dad helped us took this. We were so busy we forgot to take any pics with adrian and Shiroin =\

And this final group photo marks the end of our 2 day shoot. I hope you had fun reading =) The behind the scenes video should be coming up soon =)

Nyaa!Nyaa! Another update! I really like the BTS blogs especially on this project ^ ^ gives you a sense of all the hard work given to make the video! The video was really EPIC!Can't stress epic enough XD

I really like how the video turned out and I totally don't find using CG to cover up the flaws some sort of lying, I really like how clean the look turned out in the finish product.

It made me notice the story and flow more rather than the skin and other things in the video. But all the outfits looked really pretty and I also loved the wigs. XD

I am pretty impressed with how you turned the red couch green too... nyaa!nyaa!

Seeing these videos inspires me to give it my best and try to be a perfectionist when it comes to cosplay.

Hahaha I think I used a lot of chars ^ ^ Going to stop writing here now.